Category Archives: Blog Posts

History as the rigorous and systematic study most of us Westerners know and either love or loathe began in ancient Greece, with Herodotus and Thucydides.    Those early historians celebrated the great deeds of men (literally men) and their famous chronicles of war and triumph are touchstones in the tradition of Western Humanism.  In the pastContinue reading “Neolithic Wisdom”

Many years ago when I first started to meditate and otherwise seek the deeper meaning of my life, I asked a wise old man what I could trust to guide me,  since many of my beliefs had turned out to be nothing but blind biases–and since reality was clearly so much strange and subject toContinue reading “The Circle”

For weeks in mid February, I thought of my friend Leila Hadley Luce.   One day, for example, I was driving on the Taconic Parkway, noting that the sky was staying lighter longer andwhat a relief having such a long cold winter.   In rushed an impression of Leila.  I remembered sitting across the table fromContinue reading “Leila Hadley Luce”

One Saturday in February,   back in 2002,  I flew out to Portland, Oregon,  to interview Jean M. Auel, the bestselling author of The Clan of the Cave Bear, about Ayla, a blond Cro Magnon girl who was orphaned by an earthquake and adopted by Neanderthals.  I agreed with most readers that Auel’s fifth novel, SheltersContinue reading “Children of the Earth”

“Security is mostly a superstition,” said Helen Keller.  “It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Life is either a great adventure or it is nothing.”  –Helen Keller In the middle of the day on a Tuesday just after Thanksgiving, on Park Avenue in Manhattan, IContinue reading “You Are Good”

Once,  Joseph Campbell spoke to Bill Moyers of Igjugarjuk.  (This is drawn from The Power of  Myth, the book version of the series of interviews that Parabola had a hand in bringing to the world many moons ago).  The ultimate cause of all suffering  is mortality and the uncanny, unstoppable way that everything and everyoneContinue reading “Igjugarjuk”